THE NEW YORKER in Johannesburg-to get a parcel of blankets and clothing to her mother, brother, and sister, she turned pressure on her mother's doctor, telephoning him at his home late at night to urge that the prison medical officer attend her mother. When that succeeded, she contacted the local lawyer friend of a friend to take food to the prison-dried fruit, yogurt were the things one most needed, she ascertained from those who had been political prisoners-and try to get the chief warder to accept it for her mother, Robbie, and Francie. She was always on the telephone; he brought her plate from their interrupt- ed meals to the stool where she sat, el- bows on knees. This was her corner now, just as Niki had her particular place under the table. That terrible ivy, daily life: how to pull it away and see -what? She was constantly on the telephone because what was happening in the cells was far away in Johannesburg. She became stern with impatience- sympathy irritated her, and he had to realize that, for all their closeness, their apartness together, he couldn't really claim to be feeling what she was feeling. Every inquiry or instruction from her had to be referred through a third person. Jimmy's timidity made him even less intelligent, she said, than he had ever been. He wasn't to be relied on, and he was the only member of the family there. Where she should be. Every time some proxy bungled, it came up: she should be there. And then it was Nils who became distraught, could concentrate on nothing but the cold anxiety that she would go there, walk into the waiting car of the Secu- rity Police-he saw them ready for her, counting on her coming to that house, to that prison where her mother, brother, and sister were held. Hadn't he said to her, of Jimmy's fears, that it was a fact that anyone in the family could be. . .? And she was the one who had connections with Robbie be- yond blood ties! "Exactly! They might turn up here any time and take you and me. Both of us. How do we know what's come out, in there. . . what he might have told my mother or poor frightened Francie -my sister's only nineteen, you know. Those two women'll never stand up under interrogation from those beasts; they couldn't even judge what's com- promising and what isn't." His height and strength seemed to ----- o 0""/ dW é"z/ f fI c:::6 J 1) , l:';tJ --..r\ J íC' Jf -0 ---- J ('\ ) G- c;::,,-' / ,.--- . hamper him when opposing the will that tempered her slender body. He spoke, and it was as if he made some clumsy, inappropriate move toward her. "But they haven't come. I mean, thank God they haven't. Maybe they don't know about you." She gave a disparaging half-grunt, half-laugh. "Maybe no one's said anything about us . . . you. But if you go there, at once they'll decide they might as well see what you know. And there 39 l 1(( cy ( n ri c...- t:::J '\( J l c/) (1J "-- tA.1 \ <-- . is something to be got out of you." She gestured away the times her brother had appeared for refuge, the packets of papers that had been hidden under research documents about the habits of fish in the desk of the Insti- tute's Swedish expert. "Teresa, I won't let you go!" He had never before spoken to her in that voice-probably it was the ugly voice of her father; he felt he had struck her a blow, but it was on his own breast-